


Vanguard Scout Report No. 011-4-12-412710-0

by harrietscats



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Big Damn Heroes, Cayde-6 Being Cayde-6 (Destiny), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epistolary, Hunter Ingenuity, Hurt/Comfort, Marooned, Original Character(s), Stranded
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-09-02 15:58:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16790125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietscats/pseuds/harrietscats
Summary: Published with approval by Acting Speaker Zavala, Titan Vanguard, Hero of Twilight Gap and Savior of Six Fronts.Request by Executor Daichi Hideo to expunge Report No. 011-4-12-412710-0 (V.S.) from official record has been denied.Request by Cayde-6, Hunter Vanguard, to have Executor Daichi Hideo thrown into orbit has been (unfortunately) denied.





	1. [Sol 1] [Official]

[01:23]

I’m fucked.

Yeah, that isn’t the best way to start off an official Vanguard report, isn’t it? "Write your snarky reports, but always remember it's _me_ who edits those reports. And I fucking hate paperwork, kids." Sorry, Cayde. But when I first realized I was stuck on this hell rock, I screamed such violent obscenities Ghost blushed. I swear it! His little chassis got warm! It would have been adorable if things weren't so dire. So I'm gonna cuss as much as I fucking want and there is nothing you sorry bastards can do about it. Have those pencil pushers at Public Records censor it for all I fucking care. The Consensus frowns upon any sort of vulgarity in “Our City’s scout reports” but if I’m gonna fucking die on this ice ball, well, Hideo and those puritanical _assholes_ can respectfully kiss my dead, frozen ass.

Especially that prick, Hideo.

But at this rate, the odds of Cayde, Ikora, or even Zavala reading these is as minuscule as the temperature outside, so I’m gonna cuss as much as I fucking want. And it’s fucking cold, have I mentioned that yet? Ghost recorded the temperature at a brisk -170.23 Celsius when we first landed, and it's only going to get colder.

Yay. Me.

I managed to find an ice cave in my original LZ, not far away from where the huge Lighthouse loomed menacingly overhead. Delphi Flexus was nearly featureless. When the sun was at its zenith, the light refracting off the ice was blinding, despite my hood being tinted at one hundred percent. Ghost said that prolonged exposure was sure to cause some permanent damage, but a quick exposure to cold atmo would clear that. For now.

So, the reason I’m fucked: Savathûn.

Well, not Savathûn herself (thank the fucking Traveler), but one of her daughters. I had started to suspect the Hive were trying to fill the power vacuum left behind not a full year after I left Oryx’s husk in his throne world. Asher had me punching Taken with a special kind of exuberance (I did annoy him with my "inane prattling" that day, so it was well deserved). After I punched out a particularly robust Taken Ogre (because " _This delicate task can only be done by gathering the data kinetically, assistant. Put that dim Hunter brain to use and stop questioning me at every turn!_ ") Ghost finished his translation of what the Ioan Taken had been saying:

_"Savathûn, the Knowledge. Mother Morph we pray, come forth and Take from your realm beyond realms."_

I'm not going to lie, I punched the Ogre so hard, I broke the bones in my hand clear up to my elbow.

Before Eris left, she gave me a set of books. Being in their very presence made me feel Wrong, and reading them (contrary to popular belief, Hunters can read) made me feel like something Alien and Deep and Other was reaching out through the cosmos to violate my brain. But before she left, before she gave me those Verses, we took tea almost every Wednesday. I knew from those days with Eris (she honestly wasn’t that crazy, I really liked her, even though she’s probably some sort of Hive death god right now) that Savathûn, after putting an entire planet to the sword, took her fleet into a black hole to obtain a power that not even her brother's ability to Take could match. But this is a black hole we're talking about; in her hubris, the Witch-Queen was more than likely dead.

But of course I was wrong.

I landed due northeast of Dronning Maud: the last city of Humanity on Europa to fall. The Awoken reclaimed it when the Darkness was done, built spires and towers atop the remains of the humanity they had forsaken. And, according to Petra, it was my city.

Yeah, you read that right. Sorry, Zavala, but I had to do it. I mean, I had Paladins and Crows trying to assassinate me from the Fields of Glass to the _Exodus Black._ I wanted to know why. And they weren’t really eager to talk to me while coming for my rebreather or my heart with fractal blades or needle carbines. The single Paladin I had managed to disarm on Mercury had killed herself before she could say anything meaningful. Even in death, Mara Sov inspired sacrifice, and Uldren must have neglected to remove the assassination order before he so unkindly disappeared.

Asshole.

Let me paint you a picture. Most of you aren't going to see Dronning Maud outside of archival footage (if Ghost even survives this...), and I did promise those reports, didn't I Cayde? Where I am is is beautiful; palatial gardens made of spireglass, twisting skyscrapers of silvery platinum and starstuff, streets and canals laid out in honor of the very codices of the universe’s darkest secrets. Massive trees of silver bark and gold leaves loomed overhead. The cobbles were moonstone and silver. The air that filtered through my rebreather smelled almost sweet. All over things grew: foreign flowers that seemed grown by children, green growing things that moved without wind, little boughs that seemed to exist neither here nor there. And above me was a sky of just the barest color of seafoam. Beyond it I could see the darkness of space; Europa's changed atmosphere was nowhere near as advanced as Earth, nor was it barren like Luna. It was a little brighter than Mars, a little more stable. Could my people breathe in space? It seemed impossible, but there was a lot about my people I didn’t know.

“Ghost?” I queried, outstretching my hand under the eaves of a spindly building with stained glass fixtures. Ghost appeared in a whorl of Light, little pinpricks of acausal energy melting through my gloves and lifesuit and skin. My hand tingled. My soul instinctively reached for the Light.

“Don’t worry,” he assured. “I’m already measuring the atmosphere’s composition.”

I smiled, took the time to pull up the topographical map Ghost had made upon initial flyby. The me of the Collapse, the Princess trying to capture the beauty and heaven of someplace… other, had built upon the remains of Dronning Maud, named the city something sacred and beautiful. And in here I hoped to find some answers, unlock memories that came so easily to other Guardians. I wanted something not unlike Cayde’s mysterious journals or Ana Brady’s little resurrection bag: a snapshot of Essie Vos as she was.

Yeah Zavala, I can feel you trying to kill me from here. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you’ve got to get in line ahead of the cold, and the Taken, and Vivrathil, Favored of Savathûn.

But I’ll get to her in a minute.

“I’m seeing some remnants of an Awoken terraforming engine,” said Ghost, clicking and whirling above my head as he drank in Europa’s changed atmosphere. His shell shifted like an old puzzle box, and his gaze was fixed on that seafoam green sky. “Oxygen concentration is at 15.2 percent, nitrogen gas at 68 percent, carbon dioxide and water vapor at 4.5 percent each.”

“And the last 7.8?” I asked, dropping a pin on the largest tower. It seemed to be the center of the new Dronning Maud, a spear of ice and platinum and marble that raked the stars. A stained glass apparatus spun lazily at its top, sending weak beams of light dancing across the scalloped plateau. I could set up camp there, start combing the city for hostiles, make the detailed reports for the Vanguard I promised to make. I told Cayde I wanted to go to Europa to try and measure it’s reclaimability. Sloane’s Guardians on Titan had staked a fairly secure claim in the New Pacific Arcology, made it as safe as possible for some hardscrabble refugees. And under her, Faith's Harbor had blossomed. But with more citizens petitioning the Consensus to take up abandoned farmland in the EDZ and homesteads on Mars, we were running out of safe colony space. Europa’s ice cities were the next best colony.

Cayde, of course, saw through my lie almost immediately. Well, it wasn’t a lie, per se; more like a cover. I was okay with the Paladins and Crows and the occasional Corsair trying to turn my Ghost into an expensive pincushion. Sure, it was annoying, and I was getting fucking tired of Ghost resurrecting me with a tut after some Queen-fucking Awoken _coward_ poisoned my drinks, but it was something I was familiar with. Assassins, even the bad ones, were predictable.

But then the Pyramidion happened, and during Operation Intrepid, after being crushed between the unyielding machinoformed ground and the Genesis Mind, Asher Mir said something he still vehemently denies to this moment. Ghost included the transcript for Executor Hideo on the off chance I escape this hell ball.

My request to tell him to suck my dick from the back was politely declined.

//EXCERPT FROM VANGUARD SCOUT REPORT NO. 213-6-55-492175-1//

//APPROVED BY CAYDE-6—HUNTER VANGUARD//

  
[FIRETEAM: WHISKEY DOWN]

[FIRETEAM ROSTER: VOS, ALESTRA—HUNTER DESIGNATION; BANE, EUCLID—TITAN DESIGNATION; WOODS, ANAN—WARLOCK DESIGNATION]

[OPERATION INTREPID]

[STRIKE AUTHORIZATION 10042.02]

[STRIKE OVERWATCH: REY, IKORA]

[STRIKE OVERWATCH, SUPPLEMENTAL: MIR, ASHER]

[STATUS: SUCCESSFUL]

//AUDIO UNAVAILABLE//

//TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS...//

BANE: THAT LOOKS DEEP.

WOODS: VERY DEEP. THINK THERE'S A GRAVITY WELL?

BANE: I DUNNO. ES, CHECK IF THERE'S A GRAVITY WELL.

VOS: F--K YOU, I'M NOT JUMPING IN THERE. IF I WANTED TO SEE IF THERE WAS A GRAVITY WELL, I'D THROW _YOU_ IN.

BANE: WHY ME?!

VOS: YOU'RE BIG. AND ANNOYING.

WOODS: ESSIE VOS ARE YOU ADMITTING YOU'RE _SCARED_ OF SOMETHING? MOONBEAM, CHECK MY PULSE. I THINK I'M HAVING A HEART ATTACK.

VOS: SHUT UP! IT'S A SCARY, BOTTOMLESS PIT AND I'M _NOT_ JUMPING IN IT. 

MIR: WHY DO YOU THREE MOUTH BREATHERS KEEP REFERRING TO A PIT? THERE IS NO PIT IN THE PYRAMIDION. ONLY THE FRACTAL SHORES OF AN INSCRUTABLE, RADIOLARIAN LAKE!

GHOST: OH, OUR MISTAKE. HERE'S THE LAKE NOW! 

VOS: GHOST, DON'T ENCOURAGE HIM. IT'LL ONLY MAKE HIM MORE INSUFFERABLE. 

GHOST: REGARDLESS, YOU HAVE TO JUMP. 

VOS: I MEAN... EUCLID AND ANAN CAN JUMP AND I CAN STAY UP HERE AND TETHER BRAKION. THAT WAY, WE'RE ALL HAPPY. 

BANE: THAT'S COLD, GIRL. 

VOS: FINE. FINE. I'LL DO IT. I HATE YOU ALL, BUT I'LL DO IT.

WOODS: WOW. THAT WAS SO ALTRUISTIC. I MIGHT CRY. 

VOS: YEAH, YEAH, ASSHOLE. SIX HUNDRED GLIMMER EUCLID SHITS HIS PANTS WHEN WE JUMP.

BANE: I HEARD THAT, ASSHOLE. DOUBLE IT TO 1,200 IF ANAN DOES IT FIRST.

WOODS: BOLD OF YOU TO ASSUME I'LL SCREAM.

VOS: BOLD OF YOU TO ASSUME YOU WON'T.

[pause in transcription]

WOODS: IT'S JUST A _HOLE._ HOW DANGEROUS COULD IT BE?

VOS: DANGEROUS.

BANE: GENESIS MIND WAITING.

VOS: DEFINITELY SHARP ROCKS AT THE BOTTOM.

[pause in transcription]

WOODS: F--K IT. BRING. IT. ON.

[pause in transcription. reactivated at 03:22:55 on official mission clock]

VOS: SEE? NOT SO BAD.

BANE: YOU SCREAMED LIKE A GIRL.

VOS: NEWS FLASH, ASSHOLE: I AM A GIRL. AND YOU OWE ME SIX HUNDRED GLIMMER.

BANE: FINE. I'LL GET YOU AFTER WICKED GRACE LATER.

VOS: YOU KNOW YOU'RE UP TO 32,105, RIGHT?

BANE: ...NO I'M NOT.

VOS: YEAH. YOU ARE.

BANE: ... _S--T._

VOS: GHOST, WHERE ARE WE NOW? AND PLEASE DON'T SAY "ASHER'S RADIOLARIAN LAKE".

MIR: YOU MUST BE BLIND TO SEE A _RADIOLARIAN LAKE_ AND MISTAKE IT FOR A PIT!

WOODS: PIT, LAKE, WHATEVER.

MIR: **IT IS NOT "WHATEVER"!**

GHOST: NEVER MIND WHERE WE WERE BEFORE. RIGHT NOW, WE’RE IN SOME SORT OF... INTERDIMENSIONAL TERMINAL?

WOODS: IT SMELLS LIKE AN INTERDIMENSIONAL TERMINAL ALRIGHT.

VOS: OFFENDING YOUR DELICATE WARLOCK SENSIBILITIES, IS IT?

WOODS: HAHA. DID YOU COME UP WITH THAT JOKE ON YOUR OWN OR DO ALL YOU HUNTERS HAVE A HIVE BRAIN FOR BAD JOKES?

VOS: YEAH. THEY'RE RIGHT UP THERE WITH "YOUR MOM" JOKES.

WOODS: ... _WOW._

MIR: YOU MUST BE AT THE SYNTHONEURAL TERMINUS AT THE CENTER OF THE LAKE.

GHOST: MAYBE THE LAKE IS A METAPHOR?

MIR: YOU ARE ON BRAKION’S DOORSTEP. DO NOT COME BACK UNLESS IT IS WITH THE GENESIS MIND’S CORPSE. **AND IT IS _NOT_ A METAPHOR!**

BANE: EASY ENOUGH. ANY PREFERENCE ON THE CONDITION? I WANT TO USE IT’S HEAD AS A COFFEE TABLE.

[incoherent sputtering. overwatch, supplemental muted feed.]

REY: WHISKEY DOWN, BE ADVISED ASHER HAS SHUT HIS FEED OFF. THANK YOU.

GHOST: ANY TIME, IKORA. ANY LAST WORDS OF ADVICE?

REY: KNOCK LOUD, FIRETEAM. IT’S NOT POLITE TO KEEP YOUR HOST WAITING.

[transcript pause. transcript resumes at 04:15:22 on official mission clock]

WOODS: _ESSIE_!

REY: STATUS REPORT, FIRETEAM.

BANE: GOOD NEWS: BRAKION’S DEAD.

WOODS: BAD NEWS, IT TOOK ESSIE WITH IT.

[pause]

REY: REPEAT.

WOODS: THE GENESIS MIND FELL ON ESSIE. HER BIOSIGNS ARE SHOWING UP NEGATIVE ON MY HUD.

BANE: MINE TOO.

REY: I’M SEEING A TRANSMISSION FAILURE FOR HER AS WELL. CAN YOU GET VISUAL CONFIRMATION—

MIR: SUCH INCOMPETENCE! ARE YOU TWO TELLING ME YOU PERMITTED THE DEAD WEIGHT OF MY ENEMY TO FALL ON MY QUEEN?

[groan]

VOS: LITTLE HELP, PLEASE? MY KNIFE IS THE ONLY THING STANDING BETWEEN ME AND A _DISTURBINGLY_ LONG FALL. 

WOODS: THANK THE TRAVELER!

BANE: SEE? YOU'RE SO SMALL, BRAKION JUST KIND OF... FELL AROUND YOU.

VOS: FELL _ON_ ME. AND IT'S YOUR FAULT! YOU LAUNCHED ME LIKE A JAVELIN!

BANE: I SAID "GET READY".

VOS: AFTER YOU ALREADY PICKED ME UP! NOW PLEASE GET ME UP?! THE SENSATION OF MY FEET DANGLING INTO INFINITY IS NOT A GREAT ONE.

GHOST: WE'RE OKAY. JUST A LITTLE BRUISED. THE BIOSIGN FAILURE IS MY FAULT. 

VOS: TOTALLY HIS FAULT. SOMEONE GET THIS OFF ME? MY BONES ARE TURNING TO GRAVEL—HEY, WAIT. ASHER, DID YOU CALL ME YOUR QUEEN?

MIR: I. DID. NOT. NOW MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL, ASSISTANT, AND BRING ME BACK THE ARM OF THE GENESIS MIND. I WISH TO HANG IT IN A PLACE OF HONOR.

[metal groaning]

BANE: AND IF WE CAN’T REMOVE THE ARM?

MIR: THEN THE GROUND REMAINS OF ITS CHASSIS SHALL SUFFICE. I HAVE CONSTRUCTED AN URN FOR THEM.

//END TRANSMISSION//

I asked Asher later why he seemed torn between calling me “Wretch”, “Assistant”, and “My Lady”. He, of course, became certifiably irascible at the mere thought of being caught referring to me by something as glowingly positive as “My Lady”. After bullying him into telling me what a Gensym Scribe really was, it was easy enough to put two and two together.

Essie Vos. I had introduced myself to him as such. I, in the infancy of my rebirth, read my own name wrong.

Guardians were lucky to wake up from the Great Death with a name, let alone a surname. If their death was particularly violent, any memories they had in their lives before were more than likely gone. Zavala called it a blessing; this was a new chance to serve, and the memories of a past life were detrimental to that calling. Why ruminate on your First Death when you had this new life? When Ghost resurrected me, I didn’t have a name, just a badly faded letter addressed to someone with a long name. I had faint impressions like any waking Guardian: a long remodeling of Self, a laugh, the letter ‘S’. ‘S’ became ‘Essie’ easily enough, but the letter I read wrong for a simple, glaring reason:

I forgot how to read.

By the time I remembered it existed, it was waterlogged and forgotten, aged by the Collapse and my time alive in the present. The ink was all but faded; in all honesty, a napkin saw better days than the letter the Essie of Before carried to her Great Death. But I saw my name on it, read it backwards instead of forwards. My first name was butchered, lost, but the sender’s was not. It was just two letters, after all.

And I was angry. Angry with the Queen’s Wrath for pretending all this time to not know me, but not as angry as I was with myself. I met her in the Warden's office at the Tangled Shore's prison, and shoved the letter under her nose. Ever aloof, ever loyal, Petra met my accusations in stride. _“Go to these coordinates,”_ she finally said. _“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you more.”_

You would think as a Guardian I could order her to tell me. If not a Guardian, then perhaps I could urge her loyalty to a woman whose face I wore. I all but threatened her but she merely shoved me into the arena in the middle of the Prison of Elders and let the high security prisoners loose.

I still haven’t forgiven her over that.

Ghost hesitated midair. I didn’t notice at first, I was far too busy trying to figure out where Queenie marked the cache she left behind on her first trip to Europa. My fellow Astrocartographers had seeded the outer planets with caches, scout reports, meticulously gathered data that was imperative to the retaking of former colony worlds. Zavala, you did call this a new Golden Age after all. It’s not my fault my Hunters and I wanted to reclaim our glory.

Become legend.

“Guardian, I’m picking up something,” Ghost said, flickering uncomfortably above my shoulder. I felt it too, a hairsbreadth after he spoke. Fixated on the plaza before me, the biotech corneas in my eyes focused on the spinneret bridge crossing over a silver river. The air filtering through my rebreather smelled like ozone, tasted like sterility. Ghost and I chose my weapons carefully; this was a scouting mission, and Europa was close to Saturn. Oryx’s cult could have survived in the ice.

It was quiet. I reached over my shoulder, drew out my pulse rifle. Made sure the sight was calibrated. Ghost floated above my head, scanning the environs; my HUD was already starting to blink soft contact warnings. Maybe it was the Hive after all; I didn’t want to owe Cayde 6,000 glimmer if it was Vex.

“Guardian—” Ghost began, but I gently pushed him down with my hand. It was easy enough; my pulse rifle wasn’t heavy, and it’s balance was perfect. I kept my eyes out for the warping of Vex teleportation, the transmat of Fallen, hell, even the green necromancy of the Hive. I should have been looking out for something else. Something worse.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I wheeled around, balance perfect, and shoved the muzzle of my pulse rifle into the gullet of a Taken Thrall. 

I’ll be the first to say it, I screamed. Ever since I first encountered the Hive on Luna, I always hated the Thrall. I ended up pinned under a horde of hundreds in the World’s Grave, their sharp claws and drooling maws trying their damndest to dig out my organs and feast on them. And, in the darkest depths of the Hellmouth, I could not touch the Light. I dreamed of that night more often than I cared to. There would be darkness, then the otherworldly caterwauling of the Hive’s youngest progeny, and then I would be flat on my back, necrotic skin and unhinged jaws and long claws filling my HUD. Sometimes, I was in my pajamas, helpless to watch as they feasted on my flesh.

Those nights, I tended to kill whoever I was sleeping next to when I woke, blind to everything but those fucking beasts fishing around my abdomen, gnawing on my intestines like noodles. I would have died in that pit on Luna, and no resurrection would have waited. So yeah, I was fucking terrified of Thrall, if I'm being totally honest.

And fear is a powerful weapon.

I screamed as I fired a salvo of Void energy into it’s gaping mouth, sending it back into that dimensional netherspace. I didn’t take the time to wonder why I didn’t hear them approach before, but I could hear them now. And they sounded hungry. I grabbed Ghost by his shell and vaulted backward, onto the balcony above me. And what I saw must have been proof that I, Essie Vos, Guardian of the Last City, was going fucking blind and deaf.

There was a sea of Taken, a veritable horde, flickering in and out of existence with each step. Behind them were the Acolytes, the Eyes, the Knights, Hobgoblins and Goblins. It was an army, or a fraction of an army. And if this was the fraction then I hesitated to see its full might.

“Guardian— _Essie!_ ” Ghost shouted, ramming himself into my head. The pain brought me back from my reverie. There were so many of them, more than I had seen in Oryx’s dreadnaught. And they were _speaking._

Another Thrall teleported in front of me. It’s miasmic claws dug into my side, punctured deep. I screamed and drew my knife, shoved the blade deep into its jaw. With a wail that grated my brain, it vanished. I gasped, stumbled backward, gloves slick with my blood. Awoken bled black, did you know? Guardians don’t bleed often, and when they do it’s always healed quickly by our Ghosts. But Ghost took a while to heal me, and when he did, it hurt. I didn’t have the time to comment on it. Fire began to overtake the creeping ivy, the flowering alien honeysuckle. I needed to move, and fast.

“What are they saying?!” I shouted at Ghost, backing away from the horde. Acolytes were jumping on each other to get to me. Knights were throwing flames from that dark space between stars. I lost sight of the Wizards howling for blood when I turned and ran. My eyes were fixated on the massive tower and it’s apparatus of spun glass. In that place of lost memories, where Essie Vos was not Essie Vos but someone else, I knew that place was safety. “Never mind, whatever it is isn’t good—we need to get to the Lighthouse.”

“Lighthouse?!” Ghost shrieked, “No, I’m transmatting us back to the ship _now._ We are _done_ here!”

“No, wait—”

Ghost didn’t need me to protest; he felt it far before I saw it. The pinprick of my jumpship in orbit briefly glowing like a star. I kept moving, kept climbing, found refuge on the terraced roof overcome with growing things, plants of another world. I flung a grenade below, unleashed a black hole of Void. The screams of the Taken caught in its path scraped my eardrums, made me scream in agony as I reached for my head, tried to cover my ears through my hood. Fire rained down, struck the trellis, the horde, the buildings my people built.

I was still screaming when the remnants of my ship crashed into me.

Yeah, on the lists of stupid deaths, that was up there with challenging a Kell to a weaponless duel to the death. Ghost resurrected me among the wreckage. My hood was cracked, the metal and plastic scratching the skin of my face. The cold was biting; my spare armor was locked up in my ship, likely didn't survive whatever had blown my fucking ship out of orbit. Stupid, I know. Ghost hovered worriedly overhead as I clawed my way out from underneath the metal and stone, breathing in the sharp sterility of the Taken, the icy air, the acidic smoke. Heaving breath, oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide all in contradicting parts that starved me, I reached for my pulse rifle, found it battered and almost broken. But it was still usable.

The hood was doing more harm than good. I linked my fingers beneath it, in the seam between it and my lifesuit, took it off and let myself breathe. I could still feel them, marching through my city like carrion flies. The smoke must have been obscuring my scent; the cries of the Taken began to fade. I was safe, for now. But I needed a safe place to take stock, and Dronning Maud was not it, no matter what I thought of the Lighthouse in the center of the city.

“Do you want to know what they’re saying?” Ghost asked as I exited out through a crack in the stone. It was barely wider than myself; I had to hold my breath to get thin enough to squeeze through, even after tossing my sniper rifle and gun belt through the crack. The jagged edge took a layer of skin from my cheek and forehead, but once I was through, I was clear. 

“Sure, but first: if I clear city limits am I going to lose this absolutely pleasant atmosphere?”

Ghost looked pensive. He blinked thoughtfully, formulated theories based on the half-held terraforming of the Awoken, the satellite readings of the surface.

“Our luck? I wouldn’t chance it.”

I sighed, rubbed the back of my neck. Inside the city, the air was barely breathable and the temperature was cold enough to numb my nose and make my cheeks hurt. Outside her limits without a decent helmet or hood, was certain death.

There was a cliff, sheer and almost painful to look at. One of Queenie’s stashes was up there, and hopefully if was in a cave, and not pinned to the cliff by netting.

Well, I can save you from the suspense. You know that I found the damn cave. It was roughly ten feet by twelve, made of black ice and situated several hundred meters above the city below. It was just deep enough to keep a little fire going, even though it ate away at my pitiful 15.2 percent of oxygen. Ghost set an alarm to sound whenever it dipped below eight percent. Any lower, and I’d be dead. Queenie’s stash had mostly foodstuffs, a few paltry magazines for kinetic and energy weapons. No power ammo; I would need to start conserving, or hoping that the Taken had some ammo to drop. I didn’t have much hope of going back into the city without it.

“So what were they saying?” I asked Ghost. I was reclined on one side of my fire, he floated on the other. There was some dried and salted beef in Queenie’s stash, hers and my favorite. I hoped she wasn’t looking forward to eating it if she was ever moonside again. 

Ghost was quiet for a minute, overly hesitant.

“ _‘Vivrathil, Favored of Savathûn, in your name we march. Your mouth is the mouth of the Deep. Your honor we seek. May our deaths and the deaths of those unworthy of the blessings of the Worm grant you tribute.’_ ”

I sighed through my nose.

“Can we get a line out to the Vanguard?”

Ghost shuddered a no out.

“Is our tight beam out?”

“Essie, everything is out.”

I gnawed on my jerky, pensive. “Surely not radio too.”

“Radio too." 

Stranded. I was stranded on a moon that had no atmosphere, without my gear, and overrun by a Taken god.

I lost my temper.

Screaming incoherent words to the uncaring sky, I kicked a particularly weighty piece of snow and black ice out of the cave; I watched through an angry haze as it reached the city, took out a Taken Vandal on watch before it could even see it’s doom coming. A dumb Acolyte wondered why its Vandal cohort went missing, and quickly forgot the Vandal even existed. I knew that two toes were broken, even before Ghost healed them. This time, I felt the bones snap into place, new osteocytes—or whatever passed for osteocytes in Awoken—ossifying in seconds. Still too long. 

“Did they see where we are?” Ghost asked, sounding tired. I looked at him, just as tired, if not moreso. The grenade I had thrown before had yet to regenerate. My grasp on the Light was tenuous at best. From where I stood, on the lip of the cave, all I saw was the huge overripe grapefruit of Jupiter, Europa’s nearest Galilean sisters.

I could not find Earth. I could not find the Traveler.

“Doesn’t look like it,” I quipped, spit over the side with finality. It was better than screaming at the uncaring heavens. “How much Light do you have left?”

Ghost knew what I was saying. How many resurrections do I have left before my death is my last? 

“Can I run some numbers for you?” Ghost asked me. I resisted the urge to run my fist through the ice wall; if he was already running numbers, then I might as well start counting my days on my fingers.

“You do that,” I said, trying not to be bitter. “I need to crunch some numbers myself.”

Ghost looked at me in that knowing way of his.

I had set out a bedroll as near enough to the fire as I dared. I needed to breathe still, after all, and my fire needed to be as hidden as possible. The Taken nearest to me were little more than drones: Thrall and Eyes and the occasional Vandal or Acolyte. Dangerous in numbers, little more than annoying cats when individual. I was safe enough, for now.

Sitting, I undid my gun belt, removed my ammo pouches and my combat knife. I had six guns on me right now: a sidearm, a hand cannon, two pulse rifles, a shotgun, and finally my sniper rifle. Of them, three required kinetic ammo, of which I had 752 bullets to be spread amongst my hand cannon, shotgun, and pulse rifle. I had 62 energy shells for my shotgun, 14 magazines for my sidearm (15 rounds each). For my sniper rifle, I was down to 12 rounds. And against a horde the size of which I saw, less than eleven hundred bullets would barely put a dent in them.

Well, I could try for the other caches. Queenie’s was a “you’ve found yourself unexpectedly detained on a dead world in sight of Io” cache. Sure, there was a magazine shoved under the bedroll haphazardly, but Queenie was always the more thoughtful one. She used to send messages to us all, reminding us to eat, sleep, wipe down our equipment. She looked barely older than me, but the ramshackle Astrocartographers were her children.

My throat spasmed uncomfortably. Tears stung my eyes. Queenie was dead maybe a fortnight, and I missed her something awful.

“You okay, Essie?” Ghost asked. I wiped my eyes, looked through the cache, sorted down the foodstuffs almost mechanically.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m just missing Sun Bak’s noodles." 

Ghost tutted disapprovingly. He had an annoying tendency to know when I was being a bald faced liar. But damn if I wasn’t missing those goddamn noodles. 

Well, at least I have all this jerky. Sweet, sweet jerky.


	2. [Sol 1] [Private]

[Sol 1] 

[Private Log]

[03:15]

Hey Cowboy. 

Remember how badly I wanted to come to Europa? Yeah, well, that shouting match you started certainly seems much more reasonable in hindsight. I can still see you when I close my eyes. Do you remember? It was only last night, but I imagine you went to the little shithole bar in the City after I stormed off. You were so angry and I was so stubborn. Sundance and Ghost floated just out of range, torn between running for my Fireteam or yours. It was a vicious fight, an angry fight. I had just had another nightmare; I remember waking up, straddling your waist, holding a Void knife to your throat. My other hand was wrapped around your wrist, pinning it to the mattress. Logically, I knew there wasn’t any risk—you were Exo, your vulnerabilities lie in places even I didn’t know—but I was fucking terrified. I held a _knife to your throat,_ and you weren’t even angry. You just looked up at me with such understanding as you pushed the blade of Light away with two fingers. 

“You’re okay, Peaches,” you said. The knife flickered from existence briefly, but it’s Light held. With your free hand, you reached up, held my cheek. “You’re okay.”

But I wasn’t.

The knife faded. My Light shrunk back like a denied creature. Mechanically, I got off of you, begun packing. Guardians really didn’t need anything; their strikes and missions lasted days at most, but no longer than a week. But Hunters stayed out in the wilds for months, sometimes years. It was why, of all the Vanguard, we liked Ikora most.

Well, besides you. 

“Where are you going?”

“Europa.”

“Why?”

I glared at you. You  _ knew _ why. When that Corsair on Nessus tried assassinating me from 100 meters out and hit Ghost instead of me, I called you, crying, I told you about everything: Paladins and Corsairs haunting my steps, accusing me of usurpation. Telling me that my sin on Europa would not stand. But Petra must have said something to you, and you didn’t tell me then what I know now. So I yelled and screamed and cried that I needed to know why they were hurting me, hurting Ghost. 

“I’m not going to stand here and wait for some Awoken asshole to slit my throat in my sleep.”

“You’ll come back!”

“Not if they kill Ghost too!”

“Peaches, they’re not gonna kill Ghost!”

How did you know? You didn’t. Cayde, you saying that hurt; it felt like you were trivializing everything that the Awoken were doing to me. And I told you, railed against the unfairness of it all. Cayde-6 and Anastasia Bray and my whole Fireteam have insights into their pasts, and I didn’t? Normally, I wouldn’t care. Honestly, I never did, until I was being hunted for the sins of a past life.

“Those people I was isn’t who I am now! Why do you care so much?” 

“Why don’t you?!”

I’m sorry. I should have never said what I said. I was angry, and upset, and it felt like you weren’t listening. But you were; you always try to hide it but you care so fucking much, Cayde. And the only way you’re gonna hear a true Essie Vos apology is through my (probably) dead Ghost. Hunters live by the seats of their pants; you said that once. Well, I’m living by the seat of mine now. Literally. My ass is iced to the cave. 

Laugh later, idiot. I still haven’t forgotten you losing poker. At least you had the pride to walk with your head high buckass naked to the Tower. Marienna-10 laughed so hard she almost became “Marienna-11”. 

Hawthorne, slapped my shoulder and told me that if I wasn’t gonna get that, she was. And I didn’t know until then that I was a jealous little Nightstalker. 

Fuck. 

I’m sorry. Ikora is probably reading these private logs like trashy romance (and Zavala too, I know you  _ both  _ have a soft spot for that shitty romance serial from the Golden Age. What was it called again?  _ Spears and Arrows?  _ ). I can just imagine Hideo’s face when he gets to these. After the Speaker…

Do you think he’ll do it? I was at the Consensus meeting last week ago (shit, only a week? It feels like my ass has been glued here for years). Do you actually think Hideo will let us go? Zavala won’t have it, Ikora either. But the rest of the faction leaders? They tolerate us at best, call for our blood at worst. And Hideo hates us most of all. But only us. 

Hey, Hideo, if you’re reading this please go fuck yourself. 

I really hope I get off this rock. What makes this worse is I can  _ see  _ the Traveler-fucking Pyramidion from here. Literally it’s above my head. Asher Mir is a  _ neighbor.  _ And I can’t. Fucking. Talk. To. Anyone. 

I must be going crazy. I want to talk to  _ Asher.  _

You saw that report, right? You normally do. Ghost normally writes the reports and Ghost has an impeccable memory. I mean, posterity is gonna have these logs for some pitiful Guardian to find. And what are they gonna see? A dumbass Nightstalker who got her ship blown up and her communications destroyed. Who probably starved/froze/was eaten by Taken. 

A dumbass way to die, if there ever was one. 

Asher would agree. Even if I am his “Queen”. 

Cayde, I’m goddamn tired of being on the wrong side of the door. Everything I’ve found out since my rebirth has always been either Zavala going “Guardians don’t look into their pasts, Essie. There is nothing there but death.” or Awoken on the Reef giving me constipated looks. Like they didn’t know whether or not to kill me or worship me. 

Then, there was Mara. 

I was terrified, going to the Reef the first time. I was too proud to admit it at the time, but I have no shame now. I lost that in Trostland. Ikora said that any Guardian who went that far out into the Belt never came back. And if they were Awoken like me, they suffered an especially cruel fate. A faceless emissary who no one would remember would deliver a box to the Tower, and in that box would be the cleanly amputated hand of whichever poor Awoken Guardian decided to go to their ancestral home. On the palm was the brand of the Reef’s Queen, a warning.

Ikora told me this, showed me the hand of a missing Titan, warned me against pursuing this line of inquiry. But the Darkness was encroaching. Guardians were dying because they couldn’t touch the Light. The only way to survive would be to infiltrate the Black Garden. And the Awoken were the only ones who knew how. 

Zavala wasn’t happy, but he finally agreed to diplomacy with the Reef. “Be brave,” he said, holding my shoulder just the slightest bit too tight. Like he was afraid I wasn’t coming back.

You looked at me from across the table. 

“Ikora, new bet, same terms.”

(Hey, if I come back, can you tell me what you won? Or didn’t?)

Ghost and I jumped just outside the Belt, in a field of debris so thick, it put the most polluted of rivers to shame. Massive colony ships and little rock hoppers dotted the star field. Stations and warsats once manned by humanity floated derelict. And occasionally there were bodies. There were no microorganisms in space, nothing to hasten decay, or even bring it on. The dead floated in the fashion which they died: terrified, eyes long gone to bolides or radiation or the deep cold. 

I was awed. 

“Where did all this come from?” I asked, hand on the jumpship’s manual control yoke. The pathfinding program it usually relied on was all but useless here. I hoped I was as good a pilot as I was a Hunter. 

“Every ship that could escape fled Earth during the Collapse,” said Ghost as we passed a luxury solar yacht split cleanly along the keel. “They made it this far and just… died out here.”

A mother holding her child floated in view, bounced off the glass viewport. 

My eyes met the child’s. 

“It’s a graveyard.”

Ghost didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. I felt his mind as clearly as I felt my own. 

“How did we survive out here?” I asked, after moments slipped uncomfortably between us. 

“ ‘We’?”

“Awoken.” Three colony ships, shattered and belly up blocked my path like barrier islands. Flipping the drive on, I forced us into a nosedive, beneath the split hulls. I chose to ignore the dead. “Everything else out here is dead. Long dead. How did they—we—survive?”

Ghost fluttered uncomfortably. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable with me referring to myself as Reefborn. But it was what I was. 

Wasn’t it?

The jumpship’s primitive AI flashed a warning; two blinking red contacts appeared, as if summoned by paranoia and fear of the dark. I kept one hand on the yoke, the other on the panel to my right that would help give me the maneuverability if the contacts were unfriendly. 

“We’re being hailed,” said Ghost. “Maybe it’s the Awoken?”

“Or some Fallen who want to gloat first before they kill us.”

“Not funny.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

The comms blinked green. Hoping it was Awoken, I toggled the receiver. 

_ “Intruder bearing one-two-seven, you have crossed into the realm of the Awoken. State your business or be fired upon, by order of the Queen.” _

No wonder no one came back. While it wasn’t as hostile a welcome like the Fallen or the Hive or the Vex, it wasn’t “visiting grandma’s”. Uncomfortable, unsure how to respond, I looked at Ghost.

He looked right back.

“Don’t look at me!” he sputtered. “You should say something though, because they’ve targeted us.”

What?!

“Wait!” I blurted. “We’re emissaries from the Last City. We seek the counsel of the Awoken.”

They didn’t respond, but they also didn’t immediately fire on us, nor did they stop painting us with their targeting lasers. They flanked us on either side, intent clear. 

_ “Conform to my trajectory,”  _ the first speaker said. I immediately complied, my pathfinding software locking onto the ion trail of the escort ship beside me.  _ “Any deviation will be taken as an act of aggression, and you will be fired upon.” _

The comms blinked off. They were done speaking with me for now. 

I looked at Ghost, smiled. 

“Looks like we’re in the right place.”

Ghost shuddered. 

“Why does the right place always seem so scary?”

I don’t know, Ghost. I really don’t.

We were in the right place, after all. After the Awoken guard had me dock in the Vestian Outpost, they flanked me and directed Ghost and I toward the overarching building that dominated the port city. It was made of ketches, the remains of human colony ships. The ketches were a curious addition, but I wasn’t allowed time to take in the Awoken’s architectural tastes. The guard behind me none too kindly shoved my shoulder; shocked, I was compelled to follow their directions. 

And that was how I found myself before the Queen. 

Well, her brother. 

It was clear where the Awoken got their love—or lack thereof—of Earth from. He sauntered from the dais the throne sat upon, tall and imposing and  _ smug.  _ There was a light of recognition, shock, disgust, in his eyes. But that was quickly eliminated. 

That fucker knew me. 

“So… these are the trespassers demanding an audience.”

His voice. Familiar. 

“We didn’t mean to trespass,” Ghost said for us; his concern washed over me, but I assured him in the only wait I could. 

Uldren all but inflated, self-important peacocking letting us know exactly who was in charge. “The Queen herself may judge who may or may not enter our realm.” He stalked closer, towered threateningly over me. I glared up at him as the itch in my head got worse. He knew me and I knew him and it was giving me a  _ fucking headache.  _

“Me?” he whispered, demeanor threatening, mocking. I heard him unsheathe his knife, felt him run the tip of the blade up the flat of my palm, the curve of my wrist. It lingered there, but I did not move. “I see no reason she should be available for whatever stray washes up on the Reef. I should take your hand for her and condemn you to the Prison.” Beside me, Ghost bristled. “But here we are.”

“We’ve come to ask for help,” I said levelly, ignoring the way his knife was tracing the contours of my arm, like he was trying to figure out how best to torture me. 

A noise drew both Ghost and I’s attention from Uldren Sov. From behind the throne, I watched as two Fallen Vandals crept out, four hands wrapped around what looked like spears repurposed from wire rifles. They snarled, and I acted on impulse.

“ _ Fallen! _ ” shouted Ghost in alarm.

I reached behind me, wrapped my hand around the gun of the Awoken guard who had first spoken to us. The sidearm was almost perfectly weighted; I aimed for the Vandal closest, drew a bead between it’s snarling mandibles. Uldren’s knife found itself at my throat, drawing a little bead of black-blue blood. His other hand wrapped around mine, crushing. 

I was about to unsheathe my knife, drive it into his throat, when the woman we had come to see spoke. 

“It is afraid of the Fallen.”

Say what you will about Mara Sov, but she appeared from nowhere like a fucking Hive Wizard. At the time, I didn’t notice the resemblance: the similarly shaped face, same gentle slope of the nose. My hair was a greyish lavender where hers was bone white, my eyes violet where hers were blue. But my face was similar enough to hers to invoke the thought of a familial relationship.

It made my head throb worse. 

She spoke down to me. Called me “It” and “Cockroach” and “Traitor”.

“My name is Essie Vos. I am a Guardian from the Last City, and we are seeking the Black Garden.”

A flash of something moved across her face. 

“It will me the head of a Vex Gate Lord, or die trying,”

Uldren’s knife flashed. I felt the phantom of it carving through my breast bone like butter. Bisecting my heart. Leading me into my First Death. 

It’s why I’m here, Cayde. Mara’s dead, and Uldren is missing. I need answers, and the dead can’t help me. Not that they were particularly helpful while they were alive. 

Please don’t be mad. Please don’t beat yourself up over this if you find these messages, You couldn’t have stopped me. Trust me.

It’s getting late, cowboy. I’d better try and get some sleep on this hell hole. Tomorrow, I try not to blow myself up like Anan does every time he uses the Wardcliffe Coil. 

(Speaking of, see if you can bribe the teams to only use Wardcliffe Coils in the Crucible match on Sunday. I have some glimmer riding on a draw).

Anyway.

Hunter Vos, signing off. 


	3. [Sol 2] [Official]

[Sol 2]

[08:23]

Well, the good news is the alarm Ghost rigged up works. 

The bad news is it works a little _too_ well. 

After I fell asleep on my bedroll last night, front uncomfortably warm and back uncomfortably cold, I woke up to a shrill beeping and feeling like my lungs were burning from the inside out maybe thirty minutes later. 

I smothered the fire after the sixth time and woke up with ice everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean it. For a moment, I was upset that Cayde lowered the temperature in my room. Then I remembered: I was trapped on this Traveler-forsaken ice ball.

I scrubbed at my face, frustrated, and tried not to shoot myself in irritation.

Ghost floated above my head, scanning me.

“Your oxygen saturation is too low,” he said. 

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I grumbled, pulling the bedroll’s blankets tighter around me. It was like being hugged by a glacier, but it kept what little heat I had left in me. “You crunch those numbers?”

“You crunch yours?”

“Don’t make me shove you in my backpack.”

I took little time in relighting my fire. The heat hurt on first contact, but I would take that over suffocating in my sleep any day. I knew I couldn’t stay up here too long; I had no idea where the other caches were located, and if they happened to be out in the wastes, unless I found a working hood or Golden Age sensorium, I couldn’t get at them if I tried. 

“Queenie packed a lot of food,” Ghost said, observation standing in place of the question he wanted to ask. 

I grunted and stared at the haphazard packages I’d begun to sort down. There were MREs that hadn’t seen the light of day since the Reef Wars, packets of freeze dried fruit, meats, and nuts. Hidden near the bottom was an entire canister of instant coffee and more jerky than I could ever want. 

More importantly, there were HE-HCs: high energy-high caloric cakes. They resembled a piece of flatbread the size of my palm, a few millimeters thick. They were unappetizing, unappealing pieces of agricultural engineering that tasted like mud and smelled like Thrall spit. But they had 2,900 kcal per flimsy lump, and consisted of everything your mobile Hunter needed in the wild: 15% protein, 55% carbohydrates, 30% fat.

We called them flapjacks. 

Anan used to joke that Hunters would eat anything that wouldn’t kill them. I used to wave a flapjack under his nose and tell him: “If you spent months eating these, you’d choke down anything too.” Anan didn’t believe me when I waxed poetic on the taste until we were one week into a detailed survey of New Vancouver. 

I’m proud of him, though. He only threw up twice. 

Hey Cayde, if you’re reading these and I’m dead, you’d better equip us lowly Hunters with some goddamn better hardtack or I’m coming back and haunting you. 

“Thirty MREs,” I mused. Thirty days worth of food. Then the rationing could begin. I’d crunch those numbers when I got to it.

Ghost fluttered uncomfortably. We had no radio contact with the Tower. I’d have better luck throwing a message into outer space and hoping it made contact with Io, let alone Echo Mesa. 

“Our communications are totally fried,” Ghost said. “We can try recovering our long range transponder from the wreckage…”

He trailed off. I rubbed the back of my neck. 

“Maybe there’s still something in the city,” I mused aloud. I wasn’t hoping, but there could be something still working after all these years. After all, the terraforming engine was still active. Ish. 

“Focus on eating first,” Ghost admonished. There was a small distortion of Light, and an MRE landed in my lap. 

I looked at him, eyebrow quirked, smiling conspiratorially. 

“I thought we were both low on Light,” I said.

Ghost fluttered. If he were capable of expressing emotions physically, his grin would have been somewhere between “insufferable” and “shit eating”. 

“Oh, I have enough Light left to remind you to eat.”

I grumbled something very impolitic and ripped open the MRE with my teeth. 

Scalloped potatoes and ham. Honestly, it didn’t taste awful. Cayde made worse one night, and I still ate it. Mostly out of politeness.

Hey, I’m not sorry. Even Hunters have senses of self preservation, cowboy, and not eating your cooking is top of my list of “Things Essie Vos Should Do To Stay Alive”. 

I ate a third—just enough to keep Ghost appeased—and tucked the remaining two thirds by my bedroll. I chipped at the ice on the wall and threw a few good-sized pieces into an extremely battered looking tin mug. I set it to melt beside the fire. 

“Oxygen is at nine percent,” Ghost chided. 

“Yeah, well, I need my coffee.”

“You also need to breathe.”

“Coffee first. Oxygen later.”

Ghost sputtered incoherently. I ignored him as I retrieved my hot water, dropped a purification tablet in it and topped it off with a heaping spoonful of instant coffee. With a few meditative stirs, it turned black. There was some powdered creamer in the MRE foil; I needed the calories. Sighing, I sat down with my legs over the edge of the ice cave, letting my feet dangle the hundred or so meters to the city below. It honestly was a beautiful view; Io was rising over the horizon, a yellow and green marble. Behind it hovered Ganymede's dirty snowball. And in the foreground was the Lighthouse and the horde. 

I drank my coffee, took in the enemy. If I was going to die here, then I might as well make some observations for the Vanguard. After all, it’s why I’m making these reports, rather than having Ghost write them up.

And it’s a good way to keep sane. I mean, talking to Ghost aside, Guardians do an unhealthy amount of talking to themselves. Sometimes, Anan would be muttering to himself for hours in the Grand Library. Euclid and I used to take bets on how long he could hold a conversation with himself. 

Fuck. I miss you guys. 

“So, down to brass tacks,” I said, mulling over my words and my coffee. The caffeine was giving my brain a much appreciated jolt, but there was something way too macabre about talking about your own death. “How much Light have we got?”

Ghost flitted nervously overhead. He settled in the join of my shoulder and neck, his usual place when he wanted to be close. Regardless, he was a welcome, comforting weight. 

“C’mon, buddy, you never spared me the gory details before. Don’t be skittish now.”

Ghost laughed. 

“You know, no matter what, I’m right here with you right?” he said.

“Of course.”

“You’ve got a lot less Light than I’d like you to have.” He paused. “Without me topping you off, you can run on your own power for… maybe two and a half weeks.” 

I sipped my coffee. 

“Say I decide to fling myself at the Taken, guns blazing,” I said. “How many times can I do that?”

Ghost shot me a withering look.

“I’m serious!”

He huffed. 

“If you don’t get hurt, I have enough Light left for about five resurrections. If I only resurrect you and keep you as close to life as possible, I have sixteen. And if I heal you?” He trailed off, unwilling to offer that number up. 

“Well,” I hummed, placing my coffee mug down and damping my fire down. “Let’s see how much we can fudge those numbers.”

[13:44]

I’m not dead. Yay!

Now for the bad news: I’m about eighty percent sure my shoulder is dislocated, but that’s not important. What is, is oxygen is a  _ glorious  _ accelerant.

See, there’s this gross stereotype that Hunters are dumb and only care about breaking records and finding the next big thrill. They’re not wrong; there’s nothing that gets your blood racing quite like taking on a Kell barehanded. But we lowly Hunters are good at one thing: thinking on our feet. And let me tell you, this has been an exercise on how far I can stretch it. 

Question: do you know how to make a bomb?

Sure, we have our grenades, but those are made of Light. And I wasn’t going to use a grenade that would eat at my very pitiful Light stores (I’m not an  _ idiot _ ). So the next logical step was “How many powdered creamers does it take to make a bomb?”

Answer: more than I would have liked.

I cannibalized all of the MREs. Some had powdered creamers, some had little sugar packets, and some had both. Now, each packet of creamer has 41.84 kilojoules. Since you can’t exactly apply real world physics to acausal energy, I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and say my grenades could carry a potential payload of upwards of 800 kilojoules. So around nineteen packets of coffee creamer could net me one average incendiary device. Not ideal; I knew I could charge them with a mote of my Light, but that would eliminate the planned conservation of it. 

Now for my favorite part: electrocuting myself! 

No, seriously. 

The easiest way to get liquid oxygen is to pass a light electrical current through water and let it boil off into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Collecting oxygen would be done in an upside down container submerged in the boiling water. Then I’d let it chill (pun  _ greatly  _ intended) and condense outside my little ice cave. The liquid oxygen would be added to the little canisters the flapjacks came in. I already had two canisters full of sugar and powdered creamer. The liquid oxygen had to be added very carefully or I’d Wardcliffe Coil myself into the next life. 

Also, there was the teensy problem of me having to let my fire burn long enough to almost suffocate. 

Yay science! 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ghost asked, seemingly for the millionth time.

“Not really,” I said, snapping the lid of a canister shut and settling it gently to the side. “But I’m not using any more Light than necessary.”

“But building bombs in an unventilated space is?” Ghost looked at my little homemade IEDs, scanning them. “There’s a 69% they aren’t going off.”

“Then I’ll just have to hope my awesome bomb making skills are better than your system calculations.”

Ghost paused. Blinked. I took his offended silence as my chance to pack for my excursion into Dronning Maud.

Now I know you all are sitting riveted to your seats (or if you’re my Fireteam, rolling your eyes and praying to the Traveler “Please, let this not be how Essie killed herself it’s far too stupid.”) wondering how I dislocated my shoulder. 

Easy: 

I blew myself up. 

Dronning Maud was separated from the main glacier by a ravine over 800 meters deep and several hundred kilometers long. A bridge was the only thing connecting Dronning Maud to the rest of Europa. And this bridge had sat for centuries, unattended, left to the elements and bereft of the Awoken magic that had built it. 

Needless to say, there were  _ many  _ structural weak points to be exploited. 

Ghost and I crouched atop what was either an administrative building or place of worship in a past life. I had purposefully been ginger with my movements, rappelling down the face of my ice home so smoothly, I wouldn’t have left ripples in water. Snow had accumulated on my cloak. The woad on my face was already white; the materials to make more warpaint were easy enough to find. I painted my arms with it, my chest, my pants. I was a wraith, utilizing the supplies left for me to swing underneath the bridge and begin planting my explosives. 

My plan was simple, you see: a majority of the Taken horde was on the opposite side of the bridge, away from the Lighthouse. I would plant my bombs on the weak support struts, hope Dronning Maud’s magic did not answer to mine, fortify itself with mine, and lure the horde across the bridge. It was long enough and wide enough that by the time they reached the center, almost the entirety of this Vivrathil’s army would be on it. 

Then I would tell them to go fuck themselves, blow the bridge sky high, and take out any stragglers. 

“They’re planted in the right place, right?” I asked, staring through the scope of my sniper rifle at the distraction I had placed in the middle of the bridge. 

“For the sixth time: yes,” Ghost said, sounding just shy of annoyed. “They’re not going to fall for that. 

“Taken are stupid.”

“Stupid enough to see a snowman and think: “Yeah, that’s totally a servant of the Light. Let’s all go kill her.” 

I smiled. The horde was in position. My sights were on a floating Taken Wizard, right between her gnashing teeth as she bayed orders for her lady’s army. I just needed to get their attention. 

Ghost wasn’t exaggerating. Sitting about 100 meters or so from the mouth of a bridge was an exceptionally bad snowman. Honestly I did better work last Dawning; Anan and I got  _ pissed _ , absolutely fucking wasted, and made an exceptionally bad snowman of Zavala. This one was worse, if possible. It was roughly recognizable as a person: a few meters tall, the rough beginnings of a head, massive shoulders (like “Euclid wearing his pauldrons” massive), the words “FUCK YOU WITCH LADY” painted onto the chest with woad I had mixed specifically for this. 

“Alright, Ghost,” I breathed out, fingertips adjusting a dial on the scope. The wizard bayed orders again, mouth open and yawning. I could see the blackest regions of dark space in it, mesmerizing. “Let’s wreak some havoc.”

A lot of things happened in the span of seconds. The wizard opened her mouth again. I fired off a devastating shot from a trigger calibrated within an hairsbreadth of its life. The wizard died, the horde advanced, shrieking cacophonous on the air. And finally, a charging Taken thrall tripped the detonator. 

Ghost was wrong. My bombs worked beautifully. A little  _ too  _ beautifully. 

The concussion hit me a second after it went off, just long enough for me to think “IT WORKED! IT FUCKING WORKED! TAKE THAT, HUNTER STEREOTYPE—OH SHIT THAT LOOKS BIG.” I went flying in one direction, Ghost in another. I connected with the building next to the one I had been freezing my ass out on hard enough to actually crack the façade; wheezing, I fell the last five stories to the ice packed alleyway below.

When you have no Light, you really get to appreciate the feel of a concussive blast dislocating your shoulder, cracking two ribs, and giving yourself a concussion bad enough to mistake Zavala for an opera singer.

Groaning, in the snow, trying my hardest not to vomit, I could hear Ghost flit into existence above my head. He moved in that worrying way of his, torn between healing me and letting me walk it off. We couldn’t afford to be frivolous with our Light, after all. 

“Do you have access to Dronning Maud’s city planning office?” I wheezed out. I had finally managed to prop myself up on my good arm, but I wasn’t about to move any further without some Light, or some very strong drugs. 

“There’s a surgery three blocks east,” Ghost said. He made no move to go; he was afraid of leaving me, injured, with no comms, on barely held enemy territory. 

“Go, Ghost. I need you to go.”

He fluttered. Hesitated. But he disappeared in a whirl of Light and left me freezing in the snow with one working arm. 

Yes, I blacked out. Guardians don’t have the luxury of feeling pain like normal mortals anymore. Our Light protects us, protects our cells from damage, wrenches us back from the embrace of the hereafter when we have the audacity to die. And without it, we feel every ache, no matter how small, as if our skin is as fresh as a newborn’s. When I came to, confused and shaking and just the wrong side of hypothermic, Ghost still wasn’t back, and my shoulder felt like a swollen boulder in my armor. 

There’s a Guardian—retired, if you can believe it, but when your Ghost gets taken down by seven goddamn Archons, the Vanguard frowns on you leaving the Tower. He’s an angry sonuvabitch, all creaking joints and trash bedside manner and the Vanguard decided he was better served as a doctor. 

Yeah. 

A fucking  _ doctor.  _

Anyway, Cayde made sure that the new batch of Hunters had “Date Night With Doctor Sam” as soon as possible. And once you got past the reprogrammed frames in the pit of the Tower, you found his clinic. He treated civilians and Guardians alike—Marianna-10 mentioned a cranky Baroness he patched up, but she was drunk so I don’t think that really happened—and he had no time to teach us poor unfortunate new Lights how to stitch ourselves up, cauterize safely (not with a broken knife and some suspicious looking ether), preserve our Light out in the wild because “It can be gone in a goddamn instant.” 

More importantly, he taught us how to fix dislocated joints. 

I couldn’t move my shoulder. That ruled out a break. My ears were ringing and with no HUD and no Ghost, I was blind to any threats in my vicinity. While a bulk of Vivrathil’s army was on the opposite side of the ravine, there were those scouts I had initially run into. Who know if there were more; I needed my shoulder working again, and quick. 

With a grunt, I turned onto my back, forced my numb fingers around the barrel of my sniper rifle. Doctor Sam’s words were echoing in my head, acerbic and condescending.  _ “I’ll put it in terms your dim Hunter brains can comprehend. Lay on your back and use your own bloody weight to put it back in. If you can. Goddamn Hunters need to eat more.”  _

The scream I let out when I managed to raise my sniper rifle, so it’s stock was digging into the cobbles at a forty-five degree angle probably caught attention from the horde. But at this point, I was ready to ask Ghost for a heal. 

_ “It’s gonna hurt like a fuckin’ Vex gatelord stomped on your bits, but the smartest thing to do is keep quiet. You’re going to be in enemy territory, Hunter. Screaming like a goddamn banshee in heat is only gonna get you killed.” _

Sorry, Doctor Sam. Try not to be too mad when you read this. 

The stock shifted to eighty degrees. I choked on my tongue. Breakfast threatened to make an appearance but I forced myself to keep going. Inch by inch, Hunter Vos. Inch by fucking inch. 

Ninety degrees heralded a sickening  _ pop  _ and those runny, reconstituted potatoes making an equally unfortunate appearance. But I had feeling back in my arm, and my fingers itched. My nose wrinkled; under the smell of my own sick, I could smell Void, but not my Void.  _ Sterile neutrino _ .

Ghost made an appearance, shocked at the sight of my gun. 

“...Guardian?”

I chewed on my tongue like I always did when I was concentrating. Or trying to shoot a Kell through his fourth eye from 1,200 meters. 

The Taken Knight didn’t know what hit it. 

“There better be fucking narcotics on you, Ghost,” I grumbled. “And maybe a fresh change of clothes.”

If Ghost could smile, he could have. 

“Take fifteen steps into this building and you get all the drugs.”

Well, who was I to argue? He said my favorite words. 


End file.
